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The people working on CO2 capture aren't idiots, they know that plants are a competing technology. People are pursuing CO2 capture because it is orders of times

by elil17 3y ago

The people working on CO2 capture aren't idiots, they know that plants are a competing technology. People are pursuing CO2 capture because it is orders of times more efficient than plants in terms of space use, water use, etc.

otterley 3y ago
I’ll grant that sequestering CO2 requires land, but water falls from the sky. In terms of value, there’s a lot of economic distortion going on here: technology gets you investor attention, while the unexciting act of buying up land for CO2 sequestration in plant matter won’t get VCs and other investors to hand you money. There’s a profit angle here; that’s the only reason anyone will invest in this stuff.
- sanderjd 3y ago
  This kind of cynicism is brain rotting. Different people are trying to figure out different things. Planting a bunch of trees is something other people are working on. It just isn't what the specific people in this article happen to be are working on.
  - nvm0n2 3y ago
    Surely it's naive optimism that's brain rotting. What you call cynicism here looks merely like an accurate assessment of reality.
    - sanderjd 3y ago
      No, I got it right the first time: it's cynicism that rots brains. Cynicism sounds smart, but pretty much never is. Both optimism and skepticism are good. But cynicism is bad. The comment I replied to was cynicism rather than skepticism.
      - nvm0n2 3y ago
        [flagged]
        sanderjd 3y ago
        No they weren't. The vaccines were incredibly successful, saving millions of lives, and have been constantly pilloried by "the most cynical or outright conspiratorial people", to this day. The thing those people are usually most credited with being right about - the "lab leak theory" - is also not something they have ever been proven right about. It was indeed very wrong to shut down all discussion and debate about that theory, because there was - and still is - insufficient evidence either way. But that was something that many people outside the cynical-and-conspiratorial crowd said at the time. Indeed, one of the reasons it was such a giant mistake to discredit the perfectly reasonable "we don't have enough evidence to say whether lab leak or animal-borne is more likely" folks is that it lumped them in with the cynical-and-outright-conspiratorial crowd that was, and still is, incorrectly convinced that there is compelling evidence that it was a lab leak. The truth is that nobody outside the party leaders in China will ever know the answer to this. But the completely sure lab leak people are just as wrong as the completely sure animal-borne people; it's just very uncertain. This is actually an excellent demonstration of the difference between cynicism and skepticism. The cynical people were just as wrong about everything as anyone in the un-skeptical mainstream.
        nvm0n2 3y ago
        You're retconning the idea that "many people outside the cynical-and-conspiratorial crowd" talked about the lab leak theory, which isn't the case. Anyone who raised it was marked as being in that crowd regardless of what they said or who they were. I remember all this very clearly, the idea that this one was somehow different is just wrong. Everyone who talked about that was dumped into the "dangerous people who must be censored and suppressed" bucket, right up until one day overnight the US government's position suddenly flipped, at which point there had supposedly always been lots of open discussion. Just total coincidence that the DRASTIC guys who blew it open all had to be anonymous. Other things that were dismissed as cynical expert-bashing that they were later proven right about: 1. They will develop a vaccine and force us to take it using some sort of unforgeable marker (predicted in 2020, debunked as conspiracy theory, proven true <2 years later) 2. Masks work (debunked by experts Jan/Feb/March 2020) 3. Masks don't work (debunked by experts after that) 4. "Crush the curve" won't last two weeks, it will go on for much longer (predicted April 2020, proven true months later). 5. The virus can spread on long range air currents via aerosols so masks/lockdowns/mass testing won't impact case numbers (debunked Feb/Mar 2020, proven true shortly after by the Diamond Princess, denied for years after). 6. The vaccines will turn out to need more than 2 doses (predicted early 2021, debunked, proven true <6 months later). 7. The vaccines won't work even with more than two doses (predicted early 2021), which is of course correct because they were introduced with the claim they were 95% effective against infection which is obviously nowhere even close to true even if you believe the later claims about savings lives. 8. Bill Gates will get rich off the vaccines (tin foil hat garbage until it was true) 9. The vaccines won't really be as safe as they claim (predicted 2020, many severe side effects like heart damage and diabetes are now recognized as being real by the medical community after previously being denied). And we could go on. COVID was an absolute shit-show of credentialed "experts" being proven wrong, over and over, by random people on the internet. The pattern was that the most maximally cynical people were always right. For example, in 2020 I didn't believe that governments would force vaccines on people. I thought all the jabbering about qr codes or quantum dots was tinfoil stuff. More fool me: the conspiracy theorists were right and just a year later I was being forced to constantly show qr codes to be allowed to go anywhere or do anything. And I got lucky, I wasn't forced to take it via my job.
tsimionescu 3y ago
To be fair, if they aren't idiots or deluded, they're cynical profiteers and scammers. Industrial carbon capture does nothing useful other than helping to sell a narrative that we can fix global warming without massively reducing emissions.

by elil17 3y ago

otterley 3y ago

I’ll grant that sequestering CO2 requires land, but water falls from the sky. In terms of value, there’s a lot of economic distortion going on here: technology gets you investor attention, while the unexciting act of buying up land for CO2 sequestration in plant matter won’t get VCs and other investors to hand you money. There’s a profit angle here; that’s the only reason anyone will invest in this stuff.

sanderjd 3y ago
This kind of cynicism is brain rotting. Different people are trying to figure out different things. Planting a bunch of trees is something other people are working on. It just isn't what the specific people in this article happen to be are working on.
- nvm0n2 3y ago
  Surely it's naive optimism that's brain rotting. What you call cynicism here looks merely like an accurate assessment of reality.
  - sanderjd 3y ago
    No, I got it right the first time: it's cynicism that rots brains. Cynicism sounds smart, but pretty much never is. Both optimism and skepticism are good. But cynicism is bad. The comment I replied to was cynicism rather than skepticism.
    - nvm0n2 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - sanderjd 3y ago
        No they weren't. The vaccines were incredibly successful, saving millions of lives, and have been constantly pilloried by "the most cynical or outright conspiratorial people", to this day. The thing those people are usually most credited with being right about - the "lab leak theory" - is also not something they have ever been proven right about. It was indeed very wrong to shut down all discussion and debate about that theory, because there was - and still is - insufficient evidence either way. But that was something that many people outside the cynical-and-conspiratorial crowd said at the time. Indeed, one of the reasons it was such a giant mistake to discredit the perfectly reasonable "we don't have enough evidence to say whether lab leak or animal-borne is more likely" folks is that it lumped them in with the cynical-and-outright-conspiratorial crowd that was, and still is, incorrectly convinced that there is compelling evidence that it was a lab leak. The truth is that nobody outside the party leaders in China will ever know the answer to this. But the completely sure lab leak people are just as wrong as the completely sure animal-borne people; it's just very uncertain. This is actually an excellent demonstration of the difference between cynicism and skepticism. The cynical people were just as wrong about everything as anyone in the un-skeptical mainstream.
        nvm0n2 3y ago
        You're retconning the idea that "many people outside the cynical-and-conspiratorial crowd" talked about the lab leak theory, which isn't the case. Anyone who raised it was marked as being in that crowd regardless of what they said or who they were. I remember all this very clearly, the idea that this one was somehow different is just wrong. Everyone who talked about that was dumped into the "dangerous people who must be censored and suppressed" bucket, right up until one day overnight the US government's position suddenly flipped, at which point there had supposedly always been lots of open discussion. Just total coincidence that the DRASTIC guys who blew it open all had to be anonymous. Other things that were dismissed as cynical expert-bashing that they were later proven right about: 1. They will develop a vaccine and force us to take it using some sort of unforgeable marker (predicted in 2020, debunked as conspiracy theory, proven true <2 years later) 2. Masks work (debunked by experts Jan/Feb/March 2020) 3. Masks don't work (debunked by experts after that) 4. "Crush the curve" won't last two weeks, it will go on for much longer (predicted April 2020, proven true months later). 5. The virus can spread on long range air currents via aerosols so masks/lockdowns/mass testing won't impact case numbers (debunked Feb/Mar 2020, proven true shortly after by the Diamond Princess, denied for years after). 6. The vaccines will turn out to need more than 2 doses (predicted early 2021, debunked, proven true <6 months later). 7. The vaccines won't work even with more than two doses (predicted early 2021), which is of course correct because they were introduced with the claim they were 95% effective against infection which is obviously nowhere even close to true even if you believe the later claims about savings lives. 8. Bill Gates will get rich off the vaccines (tin foil hat garbage until it was true) 9. The vaccines won't really be as safe as they claim (predicted 2020, many severe side effects like heart damage and diabetes are now recognized as being real by the medical community after previously being denied). And we could go on. COVID was an absolute shit-show of credentialed "experts" being proven wrong, over and over, by random people on the internet. The pattern was that the most maximally cynical people were always right. For example, in 2020 I didn't believe that governments would force vaccines on people. I thought all the jabbering about qr codes or quantum dots was tinfoil stuff. More fool me: the conspiracy theorists were right and just a year later I was being forced to constantly show qr codes to be allowed to go anywhere or do anything. And I got lucky, I wasn't forced to take it via my job.

tsimionescu 3y ago

To be fair, if they aren't idiots or deluded, they're cynical profiteers and scammers. Industrial carbon capture does nothing useful other than helping to sell a narrative that we can fix global warming without massively reducing emissions.